A Mom's Kitchen Sink Spirituality

I wonder how many battles are fought--and won--

by moms over kitchen sinks?

I was standing at the sink yesterday doing dishes since Rose, who usually does breakfast dishes,

had stayed overnight with friends.
And I was thinking--as usual.
I'd just talked recently to a dear friend who, at age 38, is marrying a farmer.
And they are both so happy!
And I was thinking about a dream I've had that I have treasured--
about my children.

How my husband and I gave each one of them to the Lord before they were even born.
They were given to the Lord--not to the world.
To the Lord--not to just live the American dream.
And I had a dream for my children.

But there over the kitchen sink I'm surrendering my children--

and my dreams for them.

I surrender

to His dream for them.

"If you want them to be farmers, Lord," I breathe as I wipe that dish

and scrub that iron skillet,

"I'm giving up my dream, in case it doesn't match Yours."

How many large and small battles are won by moms

who are doing dishes

or practicing the bells of an acquaintance for the church Easter service

or dust mopping the dust bunnies from above the wood stove

and clearing away spider webs (and maybe even spiders)

and clearing the table after a buckwheat pancake breakfast?

Big battles that are won with a small surrender.
Just a simple, "Your will be done, Lord."

I don't have to have my way.
I just want Your way.
And if my idea of Your way isn't correct,
change my idea of Your way.

 God is as creative (or certainly more so)
than my children who can come up with the most amazing ways to amuse themselves,
like by placing cups and glasses under the plastic table cloth
and fill the valleys with water and then run play cars through the water!
God has a unique dream for each person--
like our dear friends Jason and Joanna Sturtevant who shared with us and other friends one Sunday afternoon recently about their work in Uganda with ROTOM--Reach One, Touch One Ministries.

Jason shared slides about his discipleship ministry with orphan boys whom he is mentoring
as he teaches a mechanics class to enable the young men to find jobs and support themselves.

Josh told about helping build mud and stick houses and share Christ with the poor.
He told about a poor lady who hadn't walked for a year.
Jason and Josh had prayed with her as she prayed to receive Jesus in her heart,
and later when Jason and Joshua came back around,
she was walking!
God had healed her as well as forgiving her sins!

Josh said he saw God's power work like it had been in the Bible!
Jason told about graduating his young men from his class, and Joanna told about her cooking class and hospitality work.
I'd love for our children to grow up to be missionaries or preachers or teachers or something full time in God's vineyard like Sturtevants are doing.

Or I'd love for them to be someone like their own daddy, who, though he has a full time remodeling job gives weeks out of his year to Mission Helps. In the photo below he's doing a skit at Arms Around the World Convention at our church a week and a half ago , about Mission Helps work in Ft. Myers, FL. Here he is wearing one of three hats he took for the skit, pretending to be the picky inspector who failed the final inspection at Ft. Myers Spanish church because the handicap ramp was 1/16 of an inch off specifications.

Jonathan and the boys are laying tile here to pretend it's the ramp that failed inspection.
[Praise God, the next day, Jonathan saw on Facebook that John Dykes had received the certificate of occupancy for this church at long last, and the church people had met that Sunday in the new church.
FINALLY!
Another inspector was upset with the first one for being so knit-picky.]

Or I would love if my children could be involved in Christian Law, or prison ministry like Bro. Steve Sturtevant,
who kept going up front to take pictures of whatever was going on!

But if He wants them to be laymen,
ranchers, farmers, carpenters, remodelers, ditch diggers, garbage truck drivers,
bus drivers, factory workers--

 engineers, secretaries,

nurses, doctors, midwives, museum managers,

or whatever--
Lord, it's Your dream for them that matters,
not mine.
Dedicated laymen are as desperately needed as full time Christian pastors and missionaries.
Ones who show up on Sunday and help with the work,
ones who are willing to contribute and carry their share of the load
and choose to keep loving the church people,
all those ornery, dump sheep like we all are,

instead of  just warming a pew and critiquing everyone and everything.
Ones who will help when there isn't any pay involved.

Your dream, Lord, not mine. 

Over the kitchen sink, a small surrender

that holds a ton of weight.

Lost Donkeys, Lost Steers, and the Crazy Places God Meets Us

Today, Sunday, three of us were home sick, and I picked up this book that I've had for many weeks from the library.

It's a hilarious book with some potent life lessons, called Flash:The Homeless Donkey Who Taught me about Life, Faith, and Second Chances.

I have been deeply touched with the stories in this book about this priceless donkey.

Today's story reminded me of our recent morning hunt for lost steers. 

Today I read the chapter 12 where Rachel Ridge's donkey ran away the night of a storm that blew the pasture gate off its hinges.

They spent part of the next morning hunting for it and waiting for a call from the sheriff 

to let them know when someone found it.

The author wrote about reading that morning the story of Saul and his lost donkeys--

and how Saul's frustrating experience with lost donkeys was actually the way God chose 

to encounter Saul with a new destiny--and spiritual transformation. 

[I got this picture of a nearby neighbor's donkeys or burros while out hunting for our steers.]

I hope this clip from her book will be an encouragement to others as it was to me. 

Rachel wrote,

"We wander all over the figurative countryside trying to solve our donkey problems'"

 [and for us, steer problems!]

"Our financial setbacks. Our hurting marriages.

Our parenting issues. Our soul-killing jobs. Rocky relationships. 

Ill health. Insecurities. Fears. Doubts...

But while we're out there in the middle of Nowhereville like Saul was,

God has already been at work.

In fact, Nowhereville is just where we are supposed to be.

"I started to see that all of our donkey problems, our hard situations, are the very things God uses

to get us to a place of encounter. A place where our hearts are made new. Like Saul,

we've come to the end of everything we can think of to do,

and we've given up.

And then we give it one last chance, one more shot, and boom

That's the moment God shows up."

"When we're out of our comfort zones, have used up all of our resources, 

and are at the end of all hope. 

That's the place where He meets us. 

And I suddenly knew that it was through my circumstances that God had changed me."

"I'd gone from a starry-eyed dreamer to a wiser, seasoned woman who wasn't afraid of hard work and overcoming obstacles.

I went from fear of failing to confidence in His grace. 

From one who simply read about God's strength in weakness to one who experienced it firsthand. From someone who despised the struggles to one who embraced the lessons found in them. 

All the situations I tried to fix were simply His means to get me to where He wanted me to be."

"Lost donkeys.

God's purposes...

Your journey isn't about fixing donkey problems.

It's about transformation."

So take a break like the finally found steers and the puppies once they all reached home!

Like I said to the Lord this evening,

"Thank You for all these unnerving problems You've allowed in my life.

You wanted parts of me to be transformed.

You wanted to wean me from the huge need of approval of man,

until I could be confident in who I was 

and Who You were, and Your love for me
whether others always approve of me or not."

Ever Heard of Hair Wreaths Before?

A couple weeks ago, our home school group visited the Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum which is right downtown. 

We'd picked up Aunt Irina so she could enjoy visiting with us a bit of our western heritage.

This is one of the few free places to visit around here!

Here is a statue of Katherine Lee Bates, the author of "America the Beautiful."

In the front room where we entered,something caught my eye.
Not because it was all that beautiful or amazing, but because it was unusual.

It was called a hair wreath.

This intricate wreath behind this glass is made of human hair!
If you are like me, you never heard of a hair wreath before.

But three days later, a friend was calling me, and she was going through some old things from deceased relatives, and found things she thought were valuable including a "hair wreath."

She wondered if I had ever heard of a hair wreath before.

Boy was I glad I had just visited this museum and increased my wondrous store of knowledge so I could say yes, I had just seen a couple at the museum!

If you are like me, you aren't all that excited about a hair wreath, either.
But there were plaques on the wall describing the "elaborate design of flowers, leaves, and stems." There was even an actual bird beak in one wreath.
And the names of the women who contributed either craft or hair were inscribed on the plaques.

 But all I could think about was that verse where Jesus said,

"Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

I don't think much of the hairs that fall out of my head, (other than to bewail the drastic numbers that are falling lately), do you?

They aren't worth much. I scrape them out of my hair brush and dangle them into the waste basket and try to keep the last stray one from sticking to my rough fingers. 

Hard to believe we have a God that actually knows how many hairs I just dropped into the wastebasket this morning, and how many are left on my head.

e

e

Is it sometimes hard to fathom a heavenly Father that knows and cares enough
to count hairs
and tears
and weary miles trudged,
instead of sitting like a judge in a courtroom, weighing in on everything you do--or don't do?

A judge who counts misdemeanors and mistakes and miserly meanness and mirages
instead of missing pieces and miseries and moans and miracles and
all the little matters that make up life
and from which we call to Him for His help and wisdom?

John writes that God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world through Him might be saved.

In that museum, there was a large room dedicated to relics from the days when Colorado Springs was known for its wonderful climate for sufferers from tuberculosis.
Colorado Springs was known as the "City of Sunshine."

Reading that encouraged me, for I often think of how much I miss the dear little violets that I used to love back east, and all the daffodils and spring flowers back there, all that are there because of the rich rains.
But here, there is a wealth of sunshine, and I do so need that, too!
This plaque read, "There is absolutely no need of dying of consumption if one will try the climatic prevention."

Christ did not come to condemn but to save.
And when we are overwhelmed and worried and overworked and perhaps a bit frantic about all the issues we are facing,
and more and more hairs are falling into the wastebasket,
what do we suppose our heavenly Father is counting?

Don't you suppose that He who counts a mother's hairs
dropping into the wastebasket each day,
counts her weary steps and her countless jobs and her fears and worries and frustrations, too?

When the steers get out for the umpteenth time, and the biggest boy goes driving around and can't find them,
so mom and little ones end up driving around, too, and finds those steers, and helps herd them,
and falls in the snow and nearly sprains her ankle,
and then has to deal with a daughter that's fussing about her tummy hurting and then throws up,
and dad is struggling with frazzling work and runs out of diesel all on the same day,

don't you suppose that He who counts a father's hairs
counts the miles in weary moccasins and diesel trucks?

 Don't you suppose that He Who has walked the same weary miles in our moccasins

will care about little you and about little me?

He didn't come to condemn, but to save, and if we will remember that the Father loves to comfort

and knows every detail that concerns us,

we will find strength for another weary mile.

"Like as a Mother Comforteth"

The past few weeks have been chock full of children (and parents) with either croup, coughs,

 or stomach aches and other maladies, especially poor Hannah. 

She had a fever and wasn't feeling well for a day or two and suddenly, it was full blown croup.

It almost always hits suddenly.

And usually in the middle of the night.

So I was just ready to hit the sack when I heard this awful sound, and Hannah was having a hard time catching her breath, wheezing and whooping, and coughing so hard she nearly threw up.

Both she and I panicked for a moment, and then she was the one who hollered, "It's croup!"

And I got her to calm down and get a drink for her dry throat, and then Jonathan and I bundled her up warmly under blankets under an open window with cold air coming in--the best way to treat croup.

The cold air soothes the swollen airways and brings down the swelling so they can breathe better.

Hannah kept moaning and waking up a bit frantic, so after countless times of jumping out of bed to go to her side, I ended up bringing couch cushions in by her temporary bedside and sleeping beside her.

Jonathan got this picture of us the next morning!

Yeah, after a night like that,  not everything is spic and span. 

And yeah, I could never stretch completely out on just two couch cushions.

Should've brought in three. 

And the next night, while I filled the vaporizer and diffuser and got things ready for Hannah to sleep again,

Jonathan took Hannah outside, all bundled up, to the porch swing, to get her a good dose of cold air, which we hoped would stave away the worst of the coughing.

It worked. 

Between that cold air dose, a window open a little, and the vaporizer and diffuser, she slept all night.

But that first awful night, all it took was a little comforting pat from her mommy to calm our little daughter down. She would stir with a bit of a wail and a moan and a cough perhaps, and I would jump and run to her side and give her a comforting pat, and she would fall asleep again without waking clear up. 

"Like as a mother comforteth." I kept thinking of that Scripture.

Just a little comforting pat from Mommy, and all was well again.
All was well,
because Mommy was there.

And all is well when God is there.
We don't always feel the comforting pat, so to speak.
Sometimes we have to seek for it, yet other times we are surprised with the joy of His genuine comfort,
words from Scripture, encouragement from family or friends.

All is well when God is there.